Jerry Nadler on the Rocks?A blockbuster primary pits two long-serving Democrats against each other.By Arjun Singh
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/jerry-nadler-on-the-rocks/
You don’t often see political heavyweights in a fight to the death in the midterms. Incumbents usually win — and when they don’t, it can be because they were caught by surprise, whether in a primary or general election, heralding a larger wave.
Recall Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who was taken down by Tea Party upstart Dave Brat in 2014 — the first time in history that a sitting House leader had lost in a primary. More recently, AOC felled Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus chairman, which marked the ascendance of the New Left.
Sometimes, incumbents do lose. But rarely do they lose to each other in races that pit powerful politicians against each other, fighting for political survival. One such battle is unfolding in New York City between two powerful House Democrats. Congressman Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is running in a primary against Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, for New York’s twelfth congressional district. Both are high-profile members who’ve been in Congress for decades and vehemently opposed the Trump agenda more recently. It was Nadler atop the Judiciary Committee who pushed both of Trump’s impeachments through the House, led arguments against him in the first trial, and investigated his administration on a host of other issues. Maloney, meanwhile, hauled the heads of agency after agency before her committee for oversight hearings to grill them on Trump’s policies — especially immigration. They’ve continued chairing these powerful bodies into the Biden years. With these credentials, each has high name recognition and high fund-raising potential. They’d be near-unbeatable in their seats on their own.
What has pitted them against each another, however, is a critical Democratic mistake. After last year’s census, Democrats in the state legislature attempted to gerrymander the state’s congressional map by edging out Republicans in three districts. The state Court of Appeals responded by throwing out the entire map and appointing a “special master” — Jonathan Cervas, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University — to redo it.
The result was a huge change to the state’s congressional landscape and a catastrophic one for Democrats, with several districts, as NR’s Dan McLaughlin has explained, being blended to form fusion seats of areas under incumbents. It resulted in the major part of Nadler’s old seat and his longtime power base — the Upper West Side (between 57th and 110th, Central Park, and the Hudson River) — being clubbed with the Upper East Side, which Maloney represents. The new district drawn by Cervas runs from 14th Street to 98th Street, covering all of Midtown and the upper wings, in a more efficient structure than before. This shut out some of Nadler’s most critical strongholds from the district, such as Columbia and New York Universities, as well as the West and Greenwich Villages. They’re all very progressive spots with plenty of young voters, which Nadler will no longer have.
Hence, rather than run in the new tenth district, Nadler chose to run against Maloney instead. Frankly, Nadler had no good options. North of the Upper West Side is Harlem, an area he’s never represented. To the south, the new tenth had mostly foreign territory for him, extending far into Brooklyn far inward to Ocean Avenue. Perhaps enticed by the advantageous location, former mayor Bill de Blasio is now running for Congress in that district, which overlaps with his Prospect Park and Jewish community stronghold. It’s a primary challenge that Nadler — against de Blasio’s name recognition, uber-progressivism, and local ties — clearly decided he could not win.
Longtime observers of New York politics seem to agree about Nadler’s chances against Maloney. Among them is Peter King, a former congressman who represented nearby East Queens and Nassau County in the House for nearly 30 years. In an interview with National Review, he said the twelfth-district race is tilted in favor of Maloney, given the substantial overlap between her old and new districts. Unlike Maloney’s old seat, Nadler’s was rather heavily gerrymandered, stretching bizarrely from Upper Manhattan to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in South Brooklyn — like a long snake along the length of the city — parts that have now been stripped away by the special master’s process. “[Maloney] has a clear advantage,” King said. Nadler, meanwhile, “isn’t looking too good.” Polls seem to suggest this, with the most recent Emerson College poll showing Maloney in the lead with 31 percent — ten points above Nadler, with an edge among both men and women.
Nadler’s defeat would be of great satisfaction to Republicans, putting to pasture an old Democratic hand with seniority in the House. It would especially be celebrated by Donald Trump, who has had a multi-decade feud with him since the 1980s when both were engaged in real-estate fights in New York City. Long before Trump’s entry into politics, he battled Nadler over his attempts to use his congressional perch to block various deals, mortgages, and other initiatives in the city. To see Nadler leave Congress now, primaried out by his party, would be a boon for Trump personally and a victory for Republicans generally, after they challenged the original congressional maps in court.
Still, Nadler is not a trivial opponent. His 20 years in Congress and powerful committee chairmanship give him sharp elbows and a significant fund-raising capacity, and he has raised nearly $1 million for his primary this cycle. Though the amount is well below the average he’s raised in previous years and is less than half of what Maloney has raised, it’s enough of a war chest for a more concentrated campaign in Manhattan for what will be a tough primary.
All signs, however, point to Jerry Nadler being booted out of Congress. His political career, long sustained by his gerrymandered House district, could well be over in a matter of weeks, with the primary scheduled for August 23. Fittingly, Nadler’s colleague Maloney is arranging his retirement. We conservatives should sit back, relax, and enjoy the dramatic send-off that may be to come.
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